A tale of two sisters
Tayari Jones grew up hearing the story: Mary Woodson White, scorned girlfriend of R&B legend Al Green, doused him with hot grits, supposedly because he refused to marry her. In her acclaimed new novel, “Silver Sparrow,” Green’s partner makes a cameo, popping into an Atlanta hair salon on that now infamous, grit-laden trek to Memphis. “I was 4 years old when it happened,” said Jones, an Atlanta native. “I was thinking about the woman who threw grits on Al Green throughout ‘Silver Sparrow’ because, particularly in the black community in the South, that story is referenced so much. Southern people think of history living with us all the time. In the South, we don’t necessarily refer to it as ‘history with a capital H,’ it’s more like shared history. Even in Southern novels that are contemporary, people are always referring to historical events, even just in a casual way. ” Set in her...